I'll look after you
by Asylum's Girl
Summary: Natalia Romanova's life wasn't ever easy, but she never thought she'd get the chance to change it until she met Agent Clint Barton. A deadly assassin, the world's best marksman... the odds were always going to be weighed against them. This is their tale from day one. Movieverse.
1. Chapter 1

"_**Before I worked for SHIELD I made a name for myself. I have a very specific skill set. I didn't care whom I used it for, or on. I got on SHIELD's radar in a bad way. Agent Barton was sent to kill me. He made a different call."**_

"Who is your target, Natalia?" A heavy voice blew into her ear, sending goose bumps down the smooth skin on her arms.

"The Scientist is my target." The twenty year old responded keeping her eyes locked on the bare concrete wall in front of her.

Heavy footsteps indicated movement from behind her, but she was trained well enough to know not to look back. "And what must you do with this target?"

"I must kill him."

Clint drummed his fingers on the polished glass table inside SHIELD's briefing room. It was the same procedure each time he was assigned a mission of some sort; they'd call him into briefing, either Fury or Hill would hand him a file and give a run down on the basics, the person who told him depended on how serious the case was, and they'd leave him to sort out whoever had stepped over the line. Nothing was different about this time, and yet he still drummed restlessly.

"Good morning, Agent Barton." Detective Fury said as he entered the room, going to stand on the other side of the large, rounded table. In his hands was a rather thick file that when he put it down it actually hit through the air, making a satisfying sound as it hit the glass. The one eye that Clint could see was hard, nothing light in the black orb to assure him it would be an easy case.

Then again, when did he ever get easy cases?

Orphaned from a young age and trained in the circus, Clint had made some pretty bad decisions early on in life. Once he'd broken away from being a big attraction under the big top he selflessly took the lives of strangers, until SHIELD found him. They'd offered him a second chance, the chance to wipe just that little more blood off his ledger and he'd taken it without a second thought. Now, he was one of SHIELD's best Agents, sent out to kill people like the man he had once seen in the mirror. Through all the blood, sweat and tears Clint couldn't bring himself to ever regret the decision he made. Sure, he was still a killer, but wasn't a killer of killers better than a killer of innocents?

Leaning back in his chair, eyes shifting from the file to the face of his boss, Clint could already feel that this target wasn't going to be easy to take down. The larger the file the harder they were to track, let alone kill. "What have you got for me this time?"

The file was under his fingertips the next second and Clint pulled it into his hands, flipping onto the first page. The picture of a young woman stared back at him. It was blurred as though someone had taken it quickly and ran for their lives, but he could still make out a few of her features, and the cloud of red hair that fell around her shoulders.

"Her name is Natalia Romanova," Fury told him, "She's a Russian spy. Our records show that she has been highly trained from the age of seven by unknown Russian's and she has proven to be extremely hard to catch a picture of."

"I got that." Clint replied as he flipped onto the next page, his mouth falling slack when he saw the number of people's lives she'd taken. "Her death toll is ninety?"

"I didn't say this case would be easy."

Agent Barton read through the rest of her file carefully, not wanting to miss a trick with a killer so talented. She was twenty years old, which meant she had at least thirteen years of intense training under her belt if they started right away, and they called her the 'Black Widow'. That and a lot of names were all SHIELD had to tell him about her?

"It's suicide." He said, dropping the closed file onto the table and crossing his arms.

"For anyone else? Maybe." Fury leant on the table, looking Clint right in the eyes. "But for you; it's an even fight."

"And where do you suppose I find this 'Black Widow'?" The archer asked, raising an eyebrow at his boss, "Should I go and check inside my shoes and under every toilet lid?"

Director Fury slid him a rectangular piece of light blue paper. It was heavy to pick up, heavier than any piece of paper Clint had ever held before, and there was something scrawled in delicate scripture on the front, though he couldn't read it and took a moment to curse language barriers. "You're going to a charity ball."

"What is this?" Clint asked, turning it around as if he expected to find English on the back, "Italian?"

"Pack your bag." The Director smiled at him.

"No." He replied, crossing his arms stubbornly.

Three hours later Clint was seated next to a rather hefty Italian man on a plane to Italy. The man kept telling Clint stories about his life, in very bad English, and nudging the Agent every few minutes with enthusiasm. Getting him a flight to Italy, instead of being dropped there by a Quinjet, was most likely Fury's own little way to punish the Archer.

It was safe to say that flight was one of the longest of Clint's life. He spent the entire time thinking of ways to get back at Director Fury – even if he should have been focusing on this 'Black Widow' woman and how best to wipe her from the face of the planet.

It was late when they landed in Rome, and usually Clint wanted nothing more than to retire to his hotel room to shower and sleep. However, Fury had caught on that Clint didn't do an awful lot of reading up on his targets, and simply slept the research hours away. It was completely careless, but the archer didn't care. He had managed to survive many encounters with targets before, what was one more? So, Fury had arranged for him to arrive in Italy the very same evening of the ball.

The dark car with the tinted windows, and sliding blacked out glass that separated the driver and passengers seats from the boot and backseats, drove him straight to an ancient, though classy, looking building. It had small white steps, covered in a purple carpet, leading up to pillars holding up a very intricate open foyer. Purple and white lights were fixed onto the artwork on the face of the building, what seemed to be a collage of angels and devils grimaced down at Clint as he walked up the steps in his formal attire.

He adjusted his white dinner jacket as he passed a few people standing outside, holding drinks or cigarettes as they chatted in foreign languages. Before he pushed open one of the three glass doors that separated the open foray from the main ball inside, Clint pulled out the wallet the driver had given him from one of the pockets in his jacket.

"Elliot Brandon?" He snorted quietly, looking at the forged drivers licence. Coulson probably got a good kick out of coming up with that one. Elliot Brandon was probably someone off Super Nanny, or something.

Clint pushed open one of the doors and stepped inside the party. There was music, classical of course, and some people were already twirling effortlessly on the dance floor with partners. Others were sitting at some of the tables, while many of the men seemed to gravitate towards the bar. Deciding it seemed like a safe place to look out for the Widow and he wasn't going to get through this night if he wasn't at least a little pissed, Clint found himself ordering a scotch on the rocks and looking around.

Once his drink had arrived, and the bartender was out of earshot, Clint brushed his finger passed his ear. To anyone else he would appear to be brushing his hair back, but in reality Clint was turning on the small earpiece tucked out of sight in his ear. The Agents at SHEILD would have a visual on him, no doubt after hacking into the security systems and watching from there.

"This is Agent Barton," He breathed, so softly no one would have heard him, "I've got a lock on target."

Across the room a beautiful red head woman was being introduced to a table of scientists by her 'date' and sharing a laugh with the table. All it took was a tilt of her head for Clint to know he had her in his sights.

Clint had locked his eyes onto his target but what he didn't realise that beyond the dance floor, Natalia Romanova had as well.

**So, I started to read a lot of Clintasha fanfiction lately and I was rather disappointed with the lack of fanfictions about them meeting, though the ones I did read were quite good, so I decided to write my own version.**

**Please don't badger me if, at any point in this fanfiction, I've written something that doesn't completely correspond with the comics. I've not read them – I'm not a big comic fan, though I have seen the movies.**

**It's my first time writing Clint and Natasha, so tell me what you think. Tell me if there's anything you'd like to see, any reaction you'd like to see from either, etc. Just give me an overall view of what you thought of my first Avengers fanfiction.**

**Thanks for reading!**

_**~I do not own anything to do with Marvel, Marvel's character's, or Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner~**_


	2. Chapter 2

"Dr. Caffarelli, you really are too much." Natalia forced a smile to grace her ruby red lips as the pig-headed Italian scientist, in other words her target, inappropriately squeezed her thigh through the slit up her dress in the figure hugging, floor length gown she wore.

"Nonsense, Miss Rushton." He leered at her, the smell of cigarette smoke and cheap wine wafting off his breath as his eyes scanned over her body again.

She had learnt the art of seduction when she was sixteen years old, and had been successfully pulling information out of men in any way possible since then. Only on a rare occasion did she ever have to resort in seducing them to draw the information out, most of the time they cracked under her spellbinding eyes and skilful lips against their own.

She had been enlisted in the intense 'training programme' when she was a child – a naive child who didn't understand the way the world worked. In a way, she owed the 'trainers', as they called themselves, for drawing the innocence out of her childhood and enlightening her.

By the age of eight she had learnt fifteen different types of martial arts, and how to fire a gun from close quarters. At nine she could throw a knife across long distances, hitting the bull's eye each time. Once she turned ten all childhood hopes had been sucked from her, and she had made her first kill.

That had been the first drop of blood on her ledger that would eventually lead to a downpour.

If she hadn't been trained since she was a child she would not be the natural born killer that waltzed through the lives of strangers, sucking the essences from different aspects of their lives as she passed. She had long since been separated from the emotions that tied a person down.

Fear, worry and sympathy were mere examples of the thorns of human nature that could hold her back should she become snagged on them.

Thirteen years of maiming, threatening and taking lives had turned her into the ultimate weapon of destruction.

"Call me Nichole," The assassin replied through gritted teeth, though the smile stayed perfectly in place.

"Nichole!" He proclaimed, throwing his fat hands into the air with a tipsy smile.

Of course he was already well on his way to being drunk. The ball had been on for an hour and her target was already intoxicated. This was sure as hell going to be an easy kill. She just had to keep the alcohol flowing regularly to his table. By the end of the evening he'd be too sloshed to remember his own name, let alone refuse to follow her out into the alleyway that she knew was situated around the back of the building.

As though reading her mind the professor grabbed the nearest waiter to him, who happened to be serving another table a fresh round at the time, and held onto the man's waistcoat, "A- An- 'nother round for my friends," He slurred slightly, releasing the waiter to run to the bar.

"I'll get my own." She needed an excuse to get away from the intoxicated scientist and his wandering hands. If they slid any further up her leg he'd be able to put on a one man puppet show with her underwear.

As she strode across the long ballroom, head straight until she was leaning against the bar, Natalia allowed herself a moment to permit her target's ample drinking on this night. It was, after all, his last.

The bartender, a small older man with a receding hair line, raised his eyebrow at her as she slid onto a bar stool, silently asking her what she wanted.

"Vodka, straight." She told him as there was a loud, and unmistakably drunken, cry from over the music across the room. "And bring me a pint of something bitter… and strong."

As the drinks were placed in front of her, along with a snarky grin from the bartender, Natalia noticed someone step into her peripheral vision, sliding onto the empty stool to her right. Without bothering to see who it was, and if the blissful solitude from her target was over or not, the assassin downed the shot, crinkling her nose lightly at the familiar burn down at the base of her throat.

"Vodka and beer?" Someone to her right asked, their tone sounded amused. "Who are you trying to forget?"

Natalia swung her stool around so she could face the person that was unconsciously distracting her from her target, and came face to face with an attractive man, perhaps her age, maybe a little bit older.

"Vodka without beer is like throwing money to the wind," She replied, one of the memories she allowed herself to relive was of her father drinking before he was killed. He had told her the saying was an Old Russian saying her grandfather lived by. "It's not a case of wanting to forget, more that old habits die hard."

"It's nice to know you've had this before and you're still breathing." A cheeky smile graced the strangers face, one she would have been tempted to return had she not been taught how to hold her poker face.

The scientist across the room wasn't so drunk that he would willingly follow her anywhere yet; she'd need him to be negligent enough to ingest more spirits before she could put a gun against his head without him screaming for help, and she had some time to kill. Natalia often found herself being chatted up by men when she was on task, and usually she'd silence them with a look and be on her way, but this man didn't appear to be trying to get her to bed. Perhaps it would be fun for her, to pretend she could be normal; even for a little while.

"I'm Nichole," She offered him a smile and a gloved hand once his grin had faded from his lips, "Nichole Rushton."

He took her outstretched hand a placed a small kiss on the back of it, over the black satin material, "Elliot Brandon. It's a pleasure."

"The pleasure is all mine," Natalia replied as their hands slipped apart and she looked up through her eyelashes at him. "So, Mr. Brandon, what brings you to a Scientists Benefit ball in the middle of Italy?"

Elliot chuckled lightly, leaning against the bar with one arm, and slightly towards her so they could talk over the music, "My Uncle is the head scientist working towards the cure of tropical diseases in Africa. Unfortunately he couldn't attend tonight – so I said I'd come in his place. What about you?"

The way his lips formed unnaturally around the words gave Natalia a hint that he was lying to her, yet he couldn't place where the lie was. Perhaps he didn't have an Uncle? Or he was lying about the form of work his 'Uncle' was in? Either way it didn't matter. She'd pay more attention to it if he was her target, or she had run across him before, but people lie every day.

"My date is working towards the use of animal cells in humans," Her trainers, though brutal in their methods, were great for alibies. The man she was attending the ball with this evening, so she could get close enough to her target, was a man who had been working towards a breakthrough in using animal cells to cure some human diseases and deformities. He had a wife and three children, but he'd slipped up when he asked her trainers for a loan he couldn't repay. Taking Natalia to the ball was one of many things he would need to do in order to repay his debt.

"Sounds interesting," He said as she took a long sip of her drink.

She was about to reply when the bartender, flipping his towel over his shoulder, leant on the bar towards the pair, a smirk on his lips as he watched Natalia drinking her beer. "Another drink?"

"How about a dance?" Elliot got off his stool and offered her his arm, as another song started and couples began slow dancing in time to the music.

Natalia put down the glass she had been holding in her hands and stood up, turning back to the bartender, "Could you send another round to table seven?" The night was still young, but she was growing tired of waiting for Caffarelli to order himself more drinks. The sooner she finished this the sooner she could leave.

Slipping her hand into the crook of his arm, the assassin allowed this new plaything of hers to lead her to the dance floor.

Clint was careful to keep the Scientist in his sights as he slipped his arm around her waist and took her hand in his. Coulson had told him who the Black Widow's target was, so he wouldn't have to make sure that everyone who left didn't end up dead. His only responsibilities were bringing the Widow down, and making sure she didn't take down anyone with her.

"If I may be so bold – You look beautiful," He told her as her hand slipped up to his shoulder.

Everything he'd been taught about being an assassin was telling him that he should be pinning her somewhere that she couldn't wriggle away from, and shoving a knife to her throat. He didn't feel the need to though – It was crazy, but looking into her blue green eyes Clint could see nothing but a young woman who had been taught the wrong thing from a young age. A person who just needed a second chance.

How could something so beautiful and innocent become such a ruthless killer?

"Barton," Agent Coulson's voice whispered in his ear through the earpiece as the two assassins danced together. "What are you doing? Interacting with her was not part of the plan."

Did they even have a plan?

From what Clint could remember he had been ambushed into this case – SHIELD had given it to him, with next to nothing to go by, and run off to let him deal with it.

If they had given him more information on it, and perhaps a game plan, he would be more than happy to follow it. Director Fury had left this in Clint's hands, and he would take it at his own pace. Either way, Coulson was just going to have to trust him.

Clint ignored the voices in his ear as he twirled the redheaded beauty and drew her back to him.

**I couldn't believe the positive feedback that I got from just one chapter of this.**

**It was amazing to see people had been following, reviewing and adding this to their favourites, as well as the amount of people who had even viewed it. Thank you so much – Each and every one of you.**

**I was going to wait and update this sometime next week but after the feedback I had to update it. **

**So, tell me what you think – Any ideas you may have and also, please tell me if you think I should add something in a person's POV or not. I think I might just continue in third person.**

**Once again; thank you all so much.**

_**~I do not own anything to do with Marvel, Marvel's character's, or Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner~**_


	3. Chapter 3

The hands on the large grandfather clock seemed to take extra time to make a simple movement, but the night did push on, no matter how tediously the seconds passed. Natalia's target was finally intoxicated enough for her to be able to lure him out to the alleyway without him asking questions but a new problem had made itself known.

Even as drunk as the scientist was he still had the ability to keep his weight on his feet and stumble around, conversing with other scientists and guests. He kept an arm around Natalia's waist, pulling her along with him, and introduced her to new people that she didn't care for.

Although he couldn't see it, because he couldn't see straight in the first place, the redheaded beauty was slowly, but surely, leading her target to the back door that lead into the deserted alley.

She'd torn herself away from Elliot Brandon after they'd danced together twice, and exchanged quiet conversation over the soft music.

He'd told her she looked beautiful, she retorted by saying that he should see her while she was hung over, and Elliot had asked to take her up on that offer. They'd laughed together and, for a moment, Natalia had forgotten what she was doing.

After they'd separated Natalia was chiding herself mentally – as the trainers would have done much worse if they'd seen her – for forgetting what she was designed to do. The reason she was alive was because she was so good at what she did. One man could not distract her from everything she was made to do.

Enough mistakes in her past had taught her that she could only run from her fate so many times before it caught up to her. It was better to accept what she was, than to be made to through different forms of torture. The trainers involved with the Black Widow project had forced her to kill, and the ones at HYDRA were no better. At least HYDRA paid her for the deeds she did. She was still their property, but it gave her a shred of independence to hold onto.

"Where are we going, Natalie?" The scientist asked as she pushed open the one way metal door with one hand, the other was planted firmly on his back as she pushed him into the humid evening air.

"It's Nichole." She replied, managing to push him into the alley. Was it Nichole? She'd been so many different people in her existence that she wasn't sure who she was anymore. Nichole, Natalie, Natalia and Natasha were all people she'd been, and all had blood on her hands. Natasha didn't have as much as the others, however, and so she secretly preferred her.

The door closed quietly, she had made sure there would be no noise to alert anyone to their positions – at least, not before she broke his neck. It was undecided, as of yet, whether or not he'd be given the chance to scream, or if it'd be quick and painless

"You are as pretty as a rose in full bloom." The scientist's breath washed over her - a vomit inducing mix of champagne and far too much beer - as she turned around. His calloused hands shoved her shoulders backwards roughly, pinning her against the cool metal as one trailed down her slid to her thigh, tugging at the material covering the skin there.

There was no doubt in the assassins mind that, had she been a normal girl, it would have worked and she'd be crying out for her mother, or something, as he claimed her roughly in one of the worst ways possible. But Natalia Romanova was anything but a normal girl.

Within the moment it took for him to slip her dress further up her thigh Natalia could have killed him in fifteen different ways without even drawing the weapon his hand was wandering dangerously close to.

The redhead brushed her fingertips over the back of his hand, smiling sweetly at his intoxicated leer, "And you are as dead as a hanging man." She murmured, bringing her hand down sharply to connect with the pressure point located on his neck. While he was distracted with rubbing his shoulder, Natalia slipped from his grip and pulled the gun from the holster on the top of her thigh, clicking the barrel into place.

"Nichole?" He wheezed, looking up at her from his crouched over position. The sharp blow seemed to have sobered him up enough for him to know what she had done, but not such much that he registered the gun in her hands. "I thought you wanted me?"

The little cocky smile that spread across his lips as the words left his lips made her enjoy the thought of firing the pistol and splattering his brains across the wall just that little bit more.

"I do," Her red lips spread into a sweet grin, hiding layers buried beneath of a sadistic woman that longed for the spill of his blood. "I want you on your knees with your hands above your head." The man made no play to move at all so she pushed more acid into her tone, pointing the nozzle of the gun between his eyes. The perfect shot. "Now!"

He complied hastily, lowering himself onto his knees with a clumsy air of drunken idiocy. His calloused hands immediately gripped behind his head in his desperate attempt to show her he was, finally, willing to obey her command. "I... I d-don't..." He stammered, his fear filled eyes staring into her cold green ones.

"Understand?" Her voice, cold as the winters in Russia, whipped to finish his sentence. "You owe some very important people a lot of money, and your time has run out." Of course, there was no way for Natalia to know the reason she was delivering death to him in that moment, or why he was her on her list. If it wasn't completely relevant to bringing a target down – Natalia wasn't allowed to know about it.

The master assassin could taste the change of atmosphere before the arrow had even whistled past her ear and stuck to the wall, curving to hit next to the head of the shaking scientist. At first she was fuming, irritated beyond belief that someone had the nerve to _dare_ try to take her kill from her. The scientist was hers. This was one of her rarely given chances to earn a bit more money for her kills than usual – he was a high profile kill, after all.

HYDRA gave her a little bit of money each time she took down one of their targets. She was still property of them, of course, but earning a little money each time she killed someone gave her a shred of independence for what she was doing. Sure, she was owned, but she was paid for what she did. That was more than anything she could ever hope for in the Black Widow Project.

It was in that moment that she noticed the position of the arrow, the curve of the cement around the tip. That arrow wasn't for the scientist – it was for her.

As though to confirm her thoughts, a voice called down to her from the rooftops. It was one that was soft and kind, despite harsh words, and sounded strangely familiar... though she couldn't place a face. "It's you who has run out of time, Widow."

Pressing the nozzle against the scientist's soft skin, she turned around to let her emerald eyes scan over the rooftops, determined to search out the voice of this mystery assassin. "Show yourself." She demanded once she couldn't see anything out of the ordinary from the rooftops. Once he spoke again she was sure she'd lock on his location. At least that way she could see the next arrow.

Something deep inside told her that the arrow he'd fired wasn't supposed to kill her. The silence he'd brought it down next to her with gave her an insight that he was talented with a bow and arrow – if he wanted her dead then she'd be dead. There was no doubt in her mind about that.

A moment passed before she heard his voice again. The humid air blew against her dress, but there were no noises interrupting as he spoke, allowing her to listen carefully listen to any hitches or pauses in his voice. The small echo in the alley would have confused her if she hadn't been trained for specific purposes – this included.

"The Black Widow – Soviet Agent and Russian Spy." If she wasn't sure he didn't have a death wish, she would have said she could hear a chuckle follow his words. "You've been awfully hard for my boys to track down over the years."

"Perhaps you're not as good as you think you are." She replied coldly, needing him to continue speaking for her to find where he was. "Or perhaps I'm just too good for you to find."

"I don't know who's been stroking your ego, sweetheart, but they need to stop." There was that chuckle again. He found this amusing? Perhaps he did have a death wish. It didn't matter anymore – she'd found him. "It'll explode."

"Why did you come here?" She demanded, her business head slipping back on as she stepped back on track with what she was doing. Kill the archer, kill the doctor and then go back to HYRDA.

"I came to bring you down." The archer replied arrogantly. Natalia could tell she'd hate him regardless of the situation. "So, let the scientist go."

A harsh laugh slipped through the assassins ruby red lips. "Cute. You think you can get what you want by demanding it. What happens if I say no? If I decide that I'd like to keep my little play thing on pins and needles, just wondering which breath will be his last?"

"I'll do this." There was silence for a moment, and Natalia was left to wonder what he was talking about, and whether or not he was bluffing. She'd seen the arrow, however, and she knew he'd never be sent to her unarmed. No one was ever sent after her unarmed.

The second arrow didn't come as much of a surprise. From a man that had warned her with one, she'd expected the second. What she didn't expect, however, that it would whistle from the rooftops with such speed and precision.

The pain she felt from the arrow grazing her side deeply was nothing compared to the anger she felt from not moving quickly enough. She'd seen the arrow – she'd actually watched as the silver tip gleamed in the moonlight, but still hadn't been able to jump completely away from it. That frustrated her beyond belief. The fact that, from the angle it was flying, she knew he only intended to warn her with a small gash to her side. The warm blood seeping over the side of her waist humiliatingly told her she'd only made it worse by moving.

Her green eyes returned to the rooftops, narrowing in hatred as she touched a finger to her side and brought it away. It was tainted red, but she quickly wiped it away, determined that he would not see her bleed. He would not see her weak.

Who was this man?

**I'm sorry for the late update, honestly I am. I wanted to make this chapter longer than the other two, so this one is. Though it's more like Part 1 of this chapter.**

**Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading it. Drop me a review because they make me smile/write better/update faster. **

**Thank you!**

**~I do not own anything to do with Marvel, Marvel's character's, or Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner~**


End file.
